Arcade Consoles in Station and FC Bars

[Spaceman-FXL5]

I wouldn't say I ever fired up Witcher III just to play Gwent, but it certainly was a pleasant diversion after a bit of unpleasant monster slaying.

Yep, I started to play Gwent and after 2 or 3 games, thought how do I get gud at it, then immediately thought What The *%!^ Is the Point of This?

Same as gambling on slots and things in New Vegas.

IIRC wasn't there a hidden game in MS Excel in a certain cell?

 

[aRJay]

Yep, I started to play Gwent and after 2 or 3 games, thought how do I get gud at it, then immediately thought What The *%!^ Is the Point of This?

Same as gambling on slots and things in New Vegas.

IIRC wasn't there a hidden game in MS Excel in a certain cell?

You mean the flight simulator, I believe it failed to survive one of the many updates.

 

[Fizzatron]

Fruits as temporary speed boost either to escape or catch up with Thargoids with a button press.


Slightly off topic, but I played Pacman on a Table Console in a pub (Screen faced up and the glass actually doubled as a table).
You had to place 10p on table in a Q to play, like on a pool table!
The joystick-ball either fell off, or someone unscrewed it, leaving just the thread on the joystick, mangling you thumb and finger, especially when trying to catch the 4th ghost after power up, or get to the fruit for bonus (never thought of carrying a rag in pocket to cover it!). Some used their jumper/sleeve to cover it.
Us serious players who could not, not play, had to have plasters at the ready! Ouch! (also, High Scores reset each day after switching off/reset, so you just HAD to get back on it)

I remember those, they were very cool. I definitely remember playing Galaxian on one. There's an arcade/bar here in Austin that has a cocktail unit too, I can't remember if it was Galaxian or Galaga right now though, my son says it was Galaga and I think that was it. They also had Joust and that game has aged like wine IMO, however, I digress..

Getting back to the topic, I like the idea of allowing an external application window to be rendered onto an arcade cabient screen, which then would allow us to (somehow) retarget something like MAME to it so we could boot up some classic games, or even emulators. However, it's a bit daft to go to that kind of length for something you could just have running on a steam deck or something that's right next to you. But, it's also the sort of thing Chris Roberts would think was awesome and waste dev time on rather than actually, you know, getting the real game to work. Ho hum..

But, putting that aside for a minute.. having a table in the bar of a fleet carrier and/or concourse & resort settlements, where players could partake in an Elite version of Texas Hold 'Em would be worthwhile IMO as a credit sink, and a good multiplayer hub to chill while still being immersed in the game. I could see that being pretty simple to implement and I'd definitely play something like that.

 

[Fizzatron]

I don't get this suggestion. I don't log into ED to then play another game, however nostalgic it might be.

Maybe I am too old for this. I've seen this suggestion (well in that case it was more an aggressive demand) for the first time when Cyberpunk released and people were soooooo salty that you couldn't play the pachinko machines all over town. Seriously, CP players were actually really mad at the dev for that... And to my surprise, CD Projekt actually spent dev resources to not only implement this but to actually design a host of mini games for it.

I don't get it. But then again maybe I am really to old for this "I live in my favorite video game" thing. What's next? Watch movies in a virtual theatre in ED? I have giant TV for that.

I guess it's really an extension of having the ability to eat and drink in a game as a Role Playing thing. I can see the appeal honestly, and I'm kinda old now too. For a game like Elite, where people spend can spend hours in a session, having something trivial and fun to do as a form of light relief isn't a terrible thing. To me, it's also similar to SRV racing as well, it serves no practical purpose in the game, but it's a way to have fun in the game besides the main activities.

 

[SergMx]

I've forgotten a lot of things from back in the day, but I think Wing Commander had a slot machine like that for pilot training.
In Elite I think training is a separate menu item. Or are you suggesting to enter CQC through a slot machine ?

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

... Or are you suggesting to enter CQC through a slot machine ?

No, this has nothing to do with CQC. Just a gimmick for marketing to show off, and for socialising around it, on the basis that it should be cheap to implement. It seems to me that the potential of Elite now being an MMO is not yet fully realised.

About bringing other classic games into ours this way: This is not intended to enable with this suggestion, and can create licensing issues. I don't know how this was solved in each cited example, maybe some of them are now free, or at least the concept so that clones could have been coded from scratch, or they were indeed paid for.

This is not a problem with Elite 1984. The only possible stumbling block with licensing is the BBC Micro emulator, which is included under a GNU General Public License which prevents it from being "incorporated", i.e. hidden away and treated as part of proprietary code (cf. its documentation if you have it installed.) The only thing which needs incorporating here is interfacing its input and output, i.e. screen, sound and controls.

 

[DJ]

Something really simple, with simple controls, not a time-sink; ie asteroids or space invaders; with a galaxy-wide Top 1000 leaderboard!

 

[metatheurgist]

I guess it's really an extension of having the ability to eat and drink in a game as a Role Playing thing. I can see the appeal honestly, and I'm kinda old now too. For a game like Elite, where people spend can spend hours in a session, having something trivial and fun to do as a form of light relief isn't a terrible thing. To me, it's also similar to SRV racing as well, it serves no practical purpose in the game, but it's a way to have fun in the game besides the main activities.

SRV assets and control scheme is already in the game. Using those same assets for more is depth, something ED desperately needs. There is pretty much not much to do with an SRV. I keep imagining missions that require an SRV in more ways than just pull out the scanner or turrets and scan or blast something. Almost no one does the settlement scan anymore but those are sort of race like already. If there was a reason to do those again, a race could incorporate scanning details would make it a good training or practise ground for doing settlement scans. Many sports evolved from needing to practise real world things.

I don't think putting in an entirely separate game is a good idea.

What might be a good idea and this comes back to re-using assets is a shooting range. People have already asked for the ability to try weapons, make it a game. Put some creds down, win a mat or something.

 

[aRJay]

Something really simple, with simple controls, not a time-sink; ie asteroids or space invaders; with a galaxy-wide Top 1000 leaderboard!

That strikes me as weird as putting driving games in motorway service stations so you could have a break from the stresses of driving.

 

[Old_Man_Steve]

I have a few ideas. I always have ideas.
1) A poker table that you can sit at any play against NPC for a few hands. You can throw in a mini-quest that the NPC mention, like a treasure hunt or a bounty. This was done in Westworld before the man in black stabbed the guy.
2) A boxing ring where you can fight NPCs and other players and players can place bets on you. If you get knocked out you can't box for a day and you lose 10,000 credits.
3) A "canyon race" simulator when you can practice one of the buckyball race courses and if you crash you start at the front of race rather than having to go all the way back to your recent docked station.
4) A "build your dream ship" simulator in the Shipyard which gives you access to all available mods and ship hulls and engineering possibilities, with the option to save a screenshot so you can look at it later.

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

All nice ideas but I don't think Frontier would see enough advantage for committing resources to develop all these. Imo, the existing historical Elite is the only viable one in this context, and it has connotions which others without the Elite gene don't have.

The complaint that spending time in there wouldn't benefit the main game in any way, I can understand though. The problem is that transferring any kind of progress information out of the 8-bit game probably requires delving into its ancient code, or alternatively interpreting its screen output with more modern methods, neither of which is trivial. But the possibility of a trivial solution is the main point of this suggestion. If playing it counted towards the weekly free ARX, wouldn't this be good enough?